Ex-CIA Director: Comey ‘Made a Series of Terrible Mistakes Here’

Former acting CIA director Michael Morell believes that FBI Director James Comey has made some big mistakes in how he’s handled the new revelations of potentially relevant Hillary Clinton emails.

Morell, who’s publicly supporting Hillary Clinton, spoke with David Axelrod for his CNN podcast, and he said that while Comey was clearly trying to protect the FBI, he “made a series of terrible mistakes here.”

He expressed some sympathy for Comey for all the crap he’s getting from Democrats (and even some on the right), but still said he hasn’t handled this in the proper manner:

“Back in July, when he stood up and said, ‘We’re not recommending prosecution,’ but proceeded to prosecute her publicly, and then went to the Hill a number of occasions and answered a number of questions about this, he went outside the norm.”

On the issue of how to deal with serious matters like this knowing the risks of seeming partisan, Morell advised, “The best approach is to do it the way you always do it. Whatever the issue is, do it the way you always do it and let the chips fall and always fall back on, look I just did my job, politics in mind, and we did this the normal way. We didn’t do anything differently.”

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac

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